An important gap exists in knowledge about the nature, frequency, and severity of specific drug side effects in the elderly. This ignorance makes rational assessment of risk vs. benefit very difficult in clinical decisionmaking concerning geriatric drug therapy. We will consider two common categories of geriatric illness -- falls and fractures -- and determine whether they are associated epidemiologically with use of particular forms of drug therapy. The drug classes to be studied will include antihypertensives, hypoglycemics, and psychoactive medications. Such drugs have often been implicated anecdotally as causes of these side effects in the elderly, but very little systematic documentation exists to confirm or deny the validity of this relationship. To answer this question, we will make use of a new computer-based drug epidemiology system that contains drug and diagnosis records of 1.6 million patients, of whom 200,000 are over age 60. Traditional cohort and case-control methodologies will be used to determine the relative risk of specific syncopal or orthopedic events in pateints taking the study drugs as compared with comparable age-matched controls. Multiple regression and Mantel-Haensel techniques will be used to analyze other specific variables in detail; specific attention will be paid to the effects of age, dose, and co-existing diseases and medications as risk factors for the occurrence of the adverse effects to be studied.